On 12 November 1946 in Wodzisław Śląski, at the Magistrates’ Court in Wodzisław, Department IV, Judge Dr. A. Mac, with the participation of Miss Sosnowa [or Sosna], the court reporter and head of the court’s legal office, heard the person specified below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, of the contents of Art. 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and of the significance of the oath, the witness testified as follows:
Name and surname Erna Lasok
| Age | 31 |
| Parents’ names | Paweł and Franciszka |
| Place of residence | Wodzisław Śląski |
| Occupation | teacher |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
From 7 October 1942 until 30 September 1944, I was in the concentration camp in Birkenau, where I worked as a secretary in the admissions office of the women’s political department. My job in the office involved admitting the women who had been deported to the camp, in particular writing down their exact details. Apart from this, our office received only a quantitative list of all those who perished in the gas chambers in Birkenau on particular days. We sent such lists to the Auschwitz concentration camp, to the main political office there. The upshot is that this was registration and administrative work aimed at recording the traffic of prisoners in the camp books.
I know that the abbreviation “SB” meant Sonderbehandlung [special treatment] and was used in relation to people who were killed in the gas chambers, but we had nothing to do with these issues in our admissions office. What the abbreviation “GU” [Gesonderte Unterbringung – separate accommodation] meant I do not remember, so I do not know how many people in Birkenau were marked as “SB” in the files.
I know that when the Soviet troops took Lublin, the Germans removed from Birkenau all the files with people marked “SB” – whether they destroyed these records on the spot or transported them to another place, I do not know. From that moment on, the Germans also stopped choosing female prisoners to be gassed in the gas chambers, so they did not introduce anything in place of the deleted files marked with the abbreviation “SB.”
The head of the admissions office in Birkenau was a German from the Czech Sudetes named Josef Houstek, who at the beginning of 1944 changed his original surname to Erber. His successors in the admissions office were Włodzimierz [Wladimir] Bilan and Bruno Albrecht. The aforementioned Houstek-Erber held the party rank of Oberscharführer, Albrecht was an Unterscharführer, while Bilan was a Rottenführer.
Houstek, as the head of the political department in Birkenau, wielded great power and was simply the master of life and death of the political prisoners in the camp. In particular, he decided on who among the local inmates or the prisoners sent in from other camps was to be put to death in the gas chambers, or assigned to field work or in the “Union” factory [Krupp’s factory].
In December 1943, a transport of some 10,000 Jewish women prisoners from Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia arrived in Birkenau. We had to admit all of this huge transport in our office, and we were forced to work non-stop for two days and two nights. This work exhausted us and we simply had to ask the aforementioned Houstek to allow us even one hour of rest. He replied that if we could not work, we could go to the gas chambers, and other people would come and replace us and do the job at hand. As a result, we continued without the slightest respite until the work was completed. Houstek’s successors – the aforementioned Albrecht and Bilan – supervised us at work only, and by and large their conduct towards us was proper.
In 1943, Houstek was transferred to Auschwitz for a few months and his position in Birkenau was taken over by Ernst Hoffmann, while Klaus became Houstek’s first deputy in Birkenau. As far as I know, Klaus was demoted for some offense in Birkenau, after which he was transferred to Auschwitz to a minor position. As far as I could make out, national or racial considerations did not play a role in how the above-mentioned “dignitaries” behaved towards the female inmates employed in the office. They had little direct contact with the women working outside the admissions office, and I cannot tell from my own observations how they treated them. Houstek, the main boss, was particularly notorious in Birkenau for his harshness, and he sometimes beat prisoners when they refused to answer questions or when he was dissatisfied with the answers. On the other hand, Wladimir Bilan enjoyed a good reputation among the prisoners and some female prisoners even came to him to complain when some senior block prisoners mistreated them. His kindness towards the prisoners employed in the admissions office is evidenced by the fact that when he left for Wrocław on several occasions, he took our letters written in Polish to our families. He also visited Auschwitz every day and sometimes took receipt of various packages of food sent to us by our family members, as well as of medicines and other items; this was all strictly forbidden. There were also cases where women who were set free received some money from Bilan to return home because they didn’t have any. For example, he gave one such woman from the Kraków area, when she left the camp in Birkenau along with her child, 800 zlotys for the journey. I suppose that this money was not provided by Bilan from his own finances, but from camp funds, which consisted of money taken from newly arrived prisoners. Some women prisoners from Slovakia gave Bilan the camp nickname “Apushko.” As far as I know, in Slovak “apuško” means father, so this is how they called him for being decent to others. In August 1944, Bilan “Apushko” was transferred to the neighboring Buna- Werke factories because he was too good to the prisoners.
I would like to stress that during the entire period of my incarceration in Birkenau, many transports with people of different nationalities arrived at the camp. These transports contained an average of 3,000 people, but some were much larger. For example, the transports of Hungarians in 1944 amounted to 10,000 people and they came to Birkenau every day for three months. Rudolf Höss, the main commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, to which Birkenau was subordinate, always came to us every time there was such a large transport and in his presence these prisoners were segregated into two groups, one of them consisting of younger and healthier people destined for labor, while all the others were to be killed in the gas chambers. I would like to mention that the aforementioned segregation was also carried out among local female prisoners, initially about twice a week and later at longer intervals. The number of political prisoners in Birkenau ranged from 5,000 to 10,000 people. When the segregations referred to above were carried out, at least 2,000 people would always be chosen to be executed in the gas chambers, because it was possible to gas 2,000 people in one chamber at the same time, and there were five such chambers in Birkenau. Birkenau also had four crematorium furnaces. Of the transports that came to us from various places, and which consisted mostly of people who had recently been deprived of their liberty, a very significant percentage of those segregated were sent to death in the gas chambers. Usually from a transport comprising 3,000 people, no more than 500 people would be assigned to work; the rest were designated for gassing.
Returning to Rudolf Höss, I confirm that he was always present when the prisoners were segregated, as I testified earlier, however he was more of an observer, and the main driving force behind all this combined activity was Houstek-Erber. Did Höss in any way take a more direct part in the gassing of mass transports, I do not know. I confirm that the entire first Theresienstadt transport, which consisted of 5,000 people and was gassed in February or March 1943 on Höss’ orders. Both the first and the second Theresienstadt transports were made up entirely of Jews, but a small number of the second transport were earmarked for labor in Germany. None of the other senior German officials took part in Höss’ or Houstek’s segregation of prisoners into groups for the purpose of sending one of them to the gas chambers, or at least I did not see any of them do so.
The commandant of the women’s section in Birkenau was a German woman named Maria Mandl. This German woman was also known throughout the camp for her cruelty, and would strike fear into all female inmates whenever she appeared. Selection of women prisoners – which always ended with death in the gas chambers for thousands of people – took place at her request, and she only had to obtain Houstek’s approval. The list of her crimes should also include the delousing operation that she ordered in December 1942, as a result of which about one thousand people died from freezing in the cold. The operation took place at night and lasted three nights in total. On the first night we had to go out into the yard without stockings, in thin underwear and thin dresses, and there we remained all night long. Likewise, we spent the second night in the yard in the same conditions, and access to the block was impossible at that time, because the blocks were being deloused with gas. We spent the third night in the blocks, but without our straw mattresses or any blankets. Mandl would abuse us directly at every opportunity. One time she noticed, for example, that we were boiling some water to warm ourselves up, because it was winter time. She kicked over our stove and the boiling water in pots, and proceeded to beat and kick us on the spot. In addition, we had to endure a three-hour standing punishment in front of the gate, and this was in January, during severely cold weather. If, while inspecting the blocks, she determined that one of the prisoners had not gone to her obligatory work, she would sometimes shoot the hapless woman on the spot. She did so at other times, too, under the pretext that the inmates were suspected of trying to escape.
I would like to emphasize that we lived our lives in Birkenau in the most appalling hygienic conditions, the best proof of which is that throughout 1942 and the first half of 1943 we did not have a drop of water either to drink or to wash ourselves. The average daily mortality rate in the camp was 400 people. Among the diseases that killed the most victims were typhus and camp diarrhea, and there was practically no prisoner who had not experienced either of them.
(Witness Mela Lasok did not report for an interview. Her sister Erna Lasok, who had just been interviewed, informs that Mela Lasok works in Katowice and resides at Kościuszki Street 33, 4th floor).